


Remembrance of Things Yet to Come

by wanderingstoryteller



Series: No one ever said this life would be simple [25]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Major Character Death Discussed But Not Shown - Freeform, Miscarriage, Mortality, Regeneration, Sad, Window Forward in Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-12 17:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18015404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingstoryteller/pseuds/wanderingstoryteller
Summary: Three Times the Doctor's Words Weren't Enough1) The Doctor meets an older Graham.2) The Doctor helps one of her daughters through a very deep loss.3) The Doctor helps another daughter through a different kind of loss.





	1. Who Seemed to Live Forever

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote one of these fics a while ago and have been batting around the idea of the other two for a bit but couldn't figure out where to fit them in because they're all just really sad. Then I got the bright idea of just sticking them all together. Seriously though, maybe save these fics until you need a good cry or at least have something happy to read after. 
> 
> I'll try to do something a bit more upbeat next.

The Doctor was mildly confused when she heard the door to the TARDIS open and shut. She and Yaz had only just returned to Sheffield after an adventure on their own. Yaz had been exhausted and the Doctor had lain down with her just long enough for her human mate to drift off to sleep. Her own restlessness had become too much and she’d come to make late night repairs to the central consul.

“I got the ice cream Yaz wanted.” The Doctor had not expected to hear Graham’s voice. 

She tried to sit up and promptly banged her head. Wincing she crawled out from under the consul. “When did she say she wanted that?”

“After she finished puking up her guts for the second time today.” Graham was frowning at her when she finally raised her aching head. 

The Doctor had to rub her eyes to be sure she was seeing properly. Her friend’s once grey streaked brown hair was nearly all silver and new lines deepened his familiar face. His blue grey eyes were as tired and kind as they had ever been. 

“You’re not my Graham.” 

From the way he tilted his head this wasn’t the first time this had happened. “This is 2029. What is it for you?”

“2019.”

“Did you at least mean to land in Sheffield?”

“Yea.”

“I should probably go. Best I not meet my younger self.”

The Doctor shrugged. “No worries. No one’s on the TARDIS but YAZ and me.” She could feel a smile slowly spreading across her lips. “Come here and give me a hug. I’m so happy we’re still traveling together in ten years.”

The canvas grocery bag fell from the former bus driver’s hand with a soft thump and then he followed it a moment later, covering his face as hard frantic sobs took him. He hadn’t cried after Grace died, not when Ryan could see him. He hadn’t cried at her funeral, because he’d had to strong for Ryan then too. He hadn’t cried so many times that terrible things had happened. He did now though, when there was no one but the Doctor and the TARDIS to see.

The Doctor knelt beside him, pulling him into a hug as best she could. He kept weeping, deep and wretched, burying his face in her coat and clutching at the white fabric.

“It’s over, it’s finally over and I don’t want it to be.”

“What’s over?”

“This, all of this, the traveling, the seeing impossible things, my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“The cancer is back and it’s bad this time.”

“What?”

“It’s back and I don’t want to tell you, because you and Yaz are so happy. You’re starting a family and I’m dying.”

“Of course you have to tell me, maybe I can help.”

He shook head head frantically. “No. We already had that talk the first time it came back for a bit two years ago and I had to go through chemo again. There is no future cure for cancer for basic humans, not one that will work on someone my age and not with the kind I’ve got.”

She held him and fought her tears because if she started crying she wouldn’t be able to stop and then they’d both be lost. At least she tried, she never had been good at hiding her emotions in this regeneration. 

When she started crying too, Graham calmed and began to rub her back. “Forgive me Doc. I’m making you sad when your Graham is still spry and well.”

“I’m going to miss you so damn much.” She always did, every single time she lost a companion, especially when it was to death. 

“I know.” Funny how quickly roles could be reversed. 

“You do have to tell me, my future self I mean. Yaz, and Ryan, and me, we’ll take care of you, do everything we can.”

“I know, Doc. I know. You all did the last time it came back. I just want to wait a bit this go round. It hurt so much seeing Ryan so sad,” He dried his face on his sleeves as best he could. “I know you’ll see him though it when I go, you did as much when he and I lost his Gran.”

“I will.”

They sat for a time longer, just leaning against each other, two old friends, although the Doctor had barely known Graham a year yet. 

“I don’t know why I’m being so dramatic. I thought this might be what would happen next ever since Yaz said she was pregnant.”

“What?” asked the Doctor. While her own approach to logical connections was a bit flexible, what Graham had just said sounded like an odd leap even to her.

“I’ve never forgotten that day ten years ago when a future Yaz ran onto the TARDIS on the very edge of giving birth. Even exhausted and in pain, she still stared at me like she’d seen a ghost, like she wanted to snatch me back from the flow of time. The Yaz in my time is only two months in and has got another twelve months to go, if it takes her as long as it would a Time Lady. I know I’ve only got three months left, at best, in this world. I won’t see your daughters as babies twice.”

“I’m sorry,” she didn’t even know what for.

“Don’t be. I never did much during most of my life but damn if I didn’t make up for it in the last bit.” His courage weakened for a moment then. “Not to say I’m not scared. I am, more than I care to admit. There’s no point to it really, the being scared bit, I mean. It won’t stop it from happening.”

“It never does,” she said very softly. 

“You’ve done it so many times. How have you faced it?”

“Not gently. I steel myself with brave words but in my heart I always rage against it.”

“Does it help?”

“Not really. It’s still death. I’m bloody terrified of my final one, as far away as it is.” 

“The undiscovered country huh?”

“Even for Time Lords.” She pulled back enough to look at him. “You belong to one of those earth religions where death isn’t so scary though right?”

“It’s supposed to be nice on the other side if you’re not a complete tosser, but sometimes I wonder if it just human words. Grace always had more use for religion than I did. I went to church as a child because my parents took me, and then I started to go again with Grace to be with her, and then after she was gone just out of habit. The words are pretty and the rituals calming but I don’t think they help me as much as they do others. I’m still afraid to die.”

“I wish I could ease your fears. I don’t think I can.”

Graham pressed her shoulder. “Doc, your my dearest friend but you are just an alien with a Time Traveling box, I’ve never thought you had all the answers. I was already too old when I met you to believe anything that foolish.”

“You don’t think so huh?” the memory of a smile graced her lips. 

“Sometimes you seem to have a bit of a goddess complex, but you really aren’t one. You eat dirt and trip over your own shoelaces. You’re just a person, an amazing and brilliant one, but just as much a person as Ryan or Yaz or me.

“Your a damn wise man Graham O’Brien.”

“I have my moments.” He gave her a smile, sad and sweet but just as true as the one he offered the first time he stepped onto the TARDIS. “Now I should get this ice-cream to my own future version of your poor morning sick girlfriend before it melts.” When he tried to stand he stumbled on limbs stiff from sitting too long. The Doctor had to help him fully to his feet. 

When he was standing, she knelt down to fetch the bag and put it over his shoulder.  She tried to offer him an arm up the steps, but he wouldn’t take it. Graham wasn’t the sort of man to ever accept help until he truly needed it and sometimes not even then. When he opened the door, warm morning light flooded the dim consul room. The Doctor hadn’t even gotten the time of day right when she’d landed. 

He paused in the doorway, looking back at her his outline illuminated in that Sheffield light. 

“Safe travels Doc.”

“Same to you my friend.”

And then he was gone. 

The Doctor stood for a long time, aching on the inside. In nearly any other life, she’d have probably stood there even longer letting the hurt get the better of her and then dashed off on some madcap adventure to force herself to forget. This time she had Yaz though. Her mate had told her a while ago she wasn’t going to put up with the moping or self pity. Sometimes, especially when they were alone, she’d even gently tug the Doctor’s hands from the TARDIS’s controls, tell her to pause, to breath, to take just a moment to be still.

It was hard, so incredibly hard, so much harder than running and yet she was learning the whole stillness business, bit by bit. She didn’t lean into the hurt but she didn’t fight it down either, instead she let it flow through her like water, like time. She took a slow deep breath, even if her mind needed it more than her body did, and then she went to go lay down with her dreaming mortal lover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should offer my thanks/apologies to both DoctorThasmine and spoilersweetie. Both of your comments on the last fic gave me the idea for this first ficlet. I know I replied to you both that I wasn't going to kill off Graham any time soon but after I said that, this chapter just started to take shape in my head. If it helps Graham is still alive and well in the main timeline of this fanfic series.


	2. While These Visions did Appear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor helps Misca through something heartbreaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Miscarriage

The distress signal they got from Shiva’s future TARDIS sent the Doctor and her team hurring across time and space. They landed hard beside a grassy knoll somewhere in the Lake Country.

Sept burst out of the TARDIS, “Grandma, you have to come quickly. Something is really wrong with Aunt Misca!”

She grabbed at the Doctor’s hand tugging her back towards the red TARDIS with surprising strength for one so small, even if she was a genetically modified super soldier. 

“What’s happened?” the Doctor followed with her companions at her heels. 

“She lay down for a nap and now she won’t get up. The TARDIS started doing the weird blue flashy light it does when it gets worried. I tried to call my moms and aunts but no one answered so I hit the big red distress button.”

“Where are they?” the consul room was empty. 

“Fighting cybermen on pluto. They said it was too dangerous for any little ones to come so Margret, the baby and I stayed with Aunt Misca on the TARDIS. We were going to pick them all up when it was over.”

“I understand. Now what is wrong with your aunt sweetheart?”

“I don’t know!” The small girl pulled  them down a hallway and to a small bedroom. “I told her the baby was crying and she tried to get up to help and then she fell back down again and said she was dizzy.”

The Doctor’s stomach knotted in fear as she pushed into the bedroom. Her daughter Misca, now likely in her mid to late thirties was curled up in a ball on a large farmhouse style bed. She was wearing a white cotton nightgown and her hands were wrapped around her heavily rounded stomach. Her skin was pale as milk. With her mixed biology it was impossible tell if she were near the eighth month of a Tycan pregnancy, the twelve of a Time Lord one, or somewhere in between. The Doctor had never had the chance to ask her how long Margret took.  

Her dark hair was a tangled braid damp with sweat. The Doctor’s first granddaughter, Margaret, was sitting beside her mother, eyes wide with worry.

Misca blinked at the Doctor groggily. “Mom? What are you doing here?”  

“Sept said you were feeling sick. I came to help.”

“I’m fine, just feeling a bit woozy. It happened sometimes when I was pregnant with Margaret too. If one of you could just go check on Shiva’s daughter, I can’t seem to get up.” She must have meant the crying baby that the Doctor only just realized she was hearing.

Graham and Ryan went to do just that.  

Worriedly the Doctor sat down on the edge of the bed. When she brushed her daughter’s hair from her face her skin was hot to the touch. “Sweetie, I don’t think your fine.”

“Really, I am. I just saw my obstetrician yesterday. She said everything looked good. The baby has even started glowing. Margaret sweetie, show your grandma your new trick.”

The toddler looked at her mother with huge grey eyes but did as she was told, placing her hands on her mother’s stomach.

“She can get the baby to glow just like you can.” 

Nothing happened. 

“Go on baby, show her.” 

“Mama, no work, mama,” said the little girl before bursting into tears.

“Hush, baby, it’s okay.” 

Misca tried to reach for her daughter and even that nearly proved too much.  

“Does anything hurt?” asked the Doctor.

“No. I just feel a little hot.”

With tremblings hands the Doctor reached out and touched the sweat damp cotton that covered her daughter’s stomach. She was almost too afraid to focus but she managed. She reached out seeking the twin heartbeats of a barely begun life. She found nothing. 

Misca watched her worriedly. “What’s wrong. Why isn’t she glowing. You can always make her glow.” 

The Doctor closed her eyes, reaching out her senses, hoping, hoping so much. She felt nothing but the cold that was often left by the absence of life. 

She had to fight down her own tears before she raised her head. She had to be strong, she couldn’t frighten her daughter. “Misca, my dear one. I think we need to get you to a hospital.”

The Tycan’s eyes narrowed, “why, what’s wrong? Is something wrong with the baby?”

“I…”

“Tell me!” she yelled loud enough to frighten the toddler further, causing her to wail and try and hide against her shoulder. 

“Her hearts aren’t beating.” 

“Then do something, make them beat.”

“I don’t think they’ve been beating for a while. She’s gone dear one.” 

“No! No! She can’t be gone. She’s inside of me, she’s safe. I felt her kick before I lay down.” 

“I’m so very, very sorry.”

“No!”

“We have to get you to a hospital. Where is your obstetrician?” 

“ Givanchi, the coordinates are on the list of emergency ones on the consul.”

The Doctor kissed her damp forehead, “Dear one, I don’t want to leave you side but I have to. Yaz is going to stay with you and I’m going to go pilot the TARDIS.” 

“Okay,” she sounded very small and scared. 

The Doctor picked up Margaret and the toddler hid her face in her grandmother’s coat and let herself be carried from the room. Sept tugged at her sleeve.

“She’s not okay is he?” 

“She…” The Doctor didn’t know what to say next. 

She was saved from answering by Graham hurrying down the hall. “Doc, I think something is wrong with the baby, she bit Ryan.” 

“Vascan babies just do that,” she said distractedly. “She probably just needs a bottle. Sept, can you show them how to feed her?” She was not actually sure if five year olds normally knew how to make up bottles for vampire infants. The sharp nodd that Sept gave her rather suggested that she did. “Also someone take Margarette for a bit.”

Graham took the toddler. “Doc, what’s happening?” 

“Misca’s miscarrying. Please I need you and Ryan to deal with the children.”

“We’ve got you covered.”  

 

She spent the next few hours doing things. She was lucky she supposed, the worst thing when something bad was happening was to not have anything to do at all. She had things to do, they should have helped. They didn’t.

She got Misca to the hospital. It tore her apart to leave her daughter  again but Yaz stayed with her with her while the Doctor went back into the TARDIS and tried to call the Pleiades. She got through and although they were knee deep in cybermen she was able to jump the TARDIS in and retrieve Dina and bring her back. 

Then Misca said she needed Avia, so the Doctor went and got her and Maggie with Shiva’s TARDIS. After that she ended up sitting in the waiting room with Yaz and Maggie because Misca had only asked for her birth mother and her mate. She knew she should do something, at least go back to the TARDIS and make sure her other grandchildren were doing alright in Graham and Ryan’s care. Except she knew they were doing just fine and she couldn’t find the strength to stand. 

Yaz, who had been alone with Misca for the longest, was the first to succumb to the tension of the day. She fell asleep with her head against the Doctor’s shoulder.

The Doctor  was slightly started when she felt Maggie tug at her other arm after they had been waiting in silence for about an hour, “come on.” 

“Where?” 

“There was a coffee machine down the hall.”

“We can’t...we can’t leave her.” She tilted her head towards the door to the waiting room and the halls that led to Misca’s room.

“We can’t help.” 

“I know. I just…”

“This isn’t going to end like last time. Avia isn’t going to poke her head in the waiting room in a few minutes and tell us to come meet the grandbaby.” 

Somewhat absurdly it occured to the Doctor that this Maggie hadn’t realize she was an earlier Doctor than her own timeline’s Doctor. It didn’t really matter. She let herself be led down the hall. Maggie tried to put coins in the coffee machine, except they didn’t work because they were Keplan coins and this was  Givanchi. They were thousands of light years and about two centuries from Maggie’s home moon.

She looked about ready to punch the damn machine before the Doctor zapped it with her screwdriver and it began to gurgle out coffee into a cheap disposable cup. It proved to be very, very bad coffee, utterly indistinguishable from hospital coffee anywhere. They drank it anyway and then they went back to the chairs.

It wasn’t long after that Ryan came in and said that Shiva had called the phone on the TARDIS and asked for someone to come get her and the others. The Doctor went and did that, it was good to be in motion. Any other time seeing Ryan with vampire baby spit up all over his shirt would have really been funny. It wasn’t then.  

She left Graham and Ryan on Shiva’s TARDIS along with all of the Pleiades when they got back to the hospital because the last thing anyone needed was more people in the waiting room. 

She found Maggie, Yaz, and now Avia  asleep in the terribly uncomfortable chairs of the waiting room. It was strange seeing Avia so much farther along in her life than she had only a few days before when she’d gone to visit the Misca who was still a child. This Avia had gone nearly entirely grey and now carried the lines of over six decades of life. The terrible scars that she carried from her bout of Blue Fever had had more than twenty years to fade. In the bones  of her familiar face, the Doctor could still see the heartbroken woman she’d once lain down with in a cold mountain cave but time had long since transformed her into someone else, complex and beautiful in different ways than her younger self had been.

No one stopped her so went down the hall to Misca’s room and into it. Dina had dozed off in a chair by the bed. Misca had her eyes closed but they snapped open the instant the Doctor looked in the room. 

The Doctor started to withdraw but Misca shook her head. 

“It’s okay,” her voice was hoarse and she looked so very pale. A sensor hooked up to her arm was making soft beeping sounds. 

Not knowing what else to do the Doctor tugged an empty chair over to sit on her other side.

Misca sat with her arms wrapped around herself. “They said I’ll be alright...now that.” She shook her head once sharply. “The fuck am I supposed to say? I just gave birth to a dead baby, nothing is alright.”

The Doctor reached for her, touching her blanket covered knee. She always had words, so many words and in that moment she had none. 

She wished she could sing in this regeneration. She could in her first, she’d sang her son so many lullabies when he was small. She’d never sung a single one to Misca, although she hadn’t known her when she was small either. She’d have given the universe to have as small a comfort as a lullaby to offer her daughter and she did not have even that. 

“Close your eyes dear one. Please, try and sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep.”

“Please, you need to rest.”

“What the hell do you know?”

“Very little. I only know what this feels like from a sire’s perspective.” 

“Your first son was a grown man when he died.” 

“Three regenerations later I sired a baby with a Time Lady named Romana. We were traveling together and in love in our own complicated way. We were both alphas, so neither of us were on suppressants. Then she died and regenerated as an omega. Something about the regeneration caused her to go into heat immediately and well, you know how heats go. The pregnancy wasn’t planned but we wanted that baby so much, even if it meant we couldn't go back to Gallifrey. She came nearly to term before she she gave birth to a daughter who never drew breath.

“You never told me that story.” 

“Some are hard to tell.” 

Misca uncrossed one arm and let her mother take her hand. “I never knew anything could hurt like this. They don’t even know what was wrong with her. They think her hearts just stopped, maybe a birth defect but they aren’t sure. They...they said it’s hard to tell with mixed species babies.”

She covered her face with her free hand fighting down sobs before they could come, clearly trying not to wake her sleeping mate in the chair at her other side. “Does it ever get better?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Not in this moment but it will.” 

“How do I get there.” 

“Keep crying, keep breathing. Know that even in your darkest pain you are loved and not alone.”

“That’s not much of answer.”

“I’m just a crazy old lady with a flying box. I don’t have answers.” 

“You’re my my mom. I used to think you did.” The edge of her lip twitched slightly although she didn’t smile. “Then I became a crazy lady in a flying box as well and realized you were just making up shit as you went along.”

“Always have.” She kissed Misca’s head. “I love you so much dear one. If I could take this pain from you I would.” 

“I know Mom.” 

She sat with Misca until she fell asleep and then went back out into the hall. She found Yaz still dozing in the waiting room. Sometimes she really missed her ninth form, she might have been strong enough to lift the sleeping woman in that one.

Instead she woke her with a gentle touch to the side of the face. Yaz stirred and let herself be led back to the Pleiades’ TARDIS. She found Ryan and Graham passed out in the nursery. Graham was sitting in a rocking chair with Margaret in his lap. Ryan had gone down sitting on the floor with his back to the crib, a picture book still in hand. Sept was curled up on the floor beside him. Ryan must have been reading to her when he fell asleep. None of the Pleiades were awake, save Shiva, who piloted them back to their TARDIS. 

When they got back Yaz slumped wearily onto the bed. “Two days ago I was helping a little eleven year old version of Misca dye a streak of her hair purple and now I’ve just sat with her through part of a miscarriage. I’m not so sure I’m cut out to see this kaleidoscope version of everyone’s lives.” She rolled onto her back, looking up at the glowing plastic stars on the ceiling.“Is this how it is all the time for you?”

The Doctor curled against her, resting her head on Yaz’s shoulder. “Some of the time, not always.” 

“How do you handle knowing what’s coming, the good and the bad? Right now my heart is breaking for Misca. At the same time I feel almost guilty knowing that I won’t have to face what she’s just had to.”

“What do you mean?” 

“I talked to my future self when she was about to give birth. You and I don’t conceive the twins on our first try but I don’t lose any pregnancies.”

A worry the Doctor had not thought to fear eased. 

Yaz began to run her hands through the Doctor’s hair. “Is that why you’re so fearless? You already know what you’re going to lose and what you aren’t?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that. Sometimes I know the general shape of things before they happen but I never know the real cost of anything until I live it. Sometimes I think it makes it harder when I know when things will end but it also makes me value every moment I have more.”

They lay in silence for a time looking at up the soft glow of the cheap plastic solar system above them.

“You know when I die, don’t you?” asked Yaz very softly.

The Doctor felt as if an unseen set of hands had grasped her hearts and begun to squeeze, “Why do you think that?” 

“Sometimes the way you look at me, some little part of you is already mourning me, not a big part but it’s there.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Swear to me you’ll never tell me when or how it happens. I couldn’t bear that.

“I swear I won’t.”

“Just tell me two things”

“Of course.” 

“Do I see our children fully grown and are you with me until the end?”

“Both.”

Yaz wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, she hadn’t realized she could feel happy and sad at the same time, considering how those two emotions were generally considered opposites. 

“Knowing those two things I think I can face anything that lies in the years to come.”

“Good.”

Another thought slowly rose to the front of Yaz’s mind. “We will have to talk about it someday you know.”

“About what?” The Doctor’s hearts felt so bruised all she wanted was to closer her eyes and fall asleep listening to her mate’s single heart beat.

“My being mortal and your not quite being so.”

“I’m not immortal my darling.”

“But you will bury me like you buried River, like you will other loves after me.”

The Doctor curled as tight around Yaz as she could. “I don’t want to think about that right now darling. I just can’t, not after today.”

She had seen her fourteenth self. She knew that she lived on after she lost Yaz, even regenerated again but she still couldn’t really imagine how. River had been easier in a way, she’d seen her die long before they fell in love. The worst was already over before they shared their first kiss. Losing Rose to another dimension and then to her human self had gutted her but at least she’d known she was alive and well. 

The thought of losing Yaz though, to know that neither fate nor circumstance would pull her from her arms but instead the simple flow of time was achingly painful. She hadn’t made peace with that yet. She wasn’t sure she could.

Yaz kissed the top of her head. “I know, just promise me that we will.”

“I promise.”

Yaz did fall asleep then, her breath growing deeper and her heartbeat slowing. The Doctor couldn’t sleep, even when she closed her eyes so she just lay there and listened.

Thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump...


	3. Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Yaz were there at the twins birth and they are there again as one faces her first death.

The Doctor and Yaz were on the way to have tea with Yaz’s family when a red phone box shaped TARDIS materialized in the middle of the sidewalk in front of them. It had somehow acquired scorch marks as well as a large Live Aid Poster on the door since she had last seen it.

A version of Jenny who was decades older than they had ever seen before stepped out and grabbed the Doctor’s hand before she could react. “Doctor. Minerva needs your help,  please, come.”

When they went into the consul room the Doctor thought she’d stepped into the wrong TARDIS for a minute, everyone looked so different.

A silver haired Diana was kneeling beside an equally grey Minerva who was crumpled on the floor. Shiva was frantically grabbing at the TARDIS controls, tapping things. Her hair still had a few streak of fire. Her movements were not as swift as they had once been but she was far more spry than a human so aged would have been. Vishnu was worriedly talking to someone on a communicator and Misca was trying to scan Minerva with some kind of medical device. They too wore the marks of age, though it slowed them no more than Shiva.

Another woman, who the Doctor was sure she hadn’t met yet although on some bone deep level she felt she knew her, was leaning against the wall. She was reminded of her ninth self, although perhaps that was just the sharp nose and the tired look in her grey eyes. Her short hair was a dirty blond, although that was likely the work of dye considering the lines on her face. The Doctor was too worried about Minerva to spare much thought for the familiar feeling stranger.

There was no sign of anyone’s mate or children. It occured to the Doctor that in the time it took a Time Lady to go grey, every one of her daughters could have been widowed several times over and all their children grown and even become mother’s themselves.

She hurried to her daughter’s side. The Doctor could see no clear signs of physical damage on her but her face was weary with pain and the moment she touched her skin she felt the regeneration energy.

Yaz knelt to take her daughter’s hand. “What happened?”

“Idiot got zapped by a dalek,” snapped Diana. Her dark eyes were wide with fear and her hands were shaking.

“I was shoving you out of the way.”

“Like I said, you’re an idiot. Should have let me get blasted,” her twin was on the edge of tears.

“Stop it, both of you.” snapped Misca. “Doctor please, Minerva isn’t regenerating and we don’t know why.”

Misca held up her tablet so the Doctor could see. “Her life force is weakening and I’m picking up the regeneration energy but the actual process isn’t starting.”

In that moment the Doctor was so terribly grateful that she did know the future, that of all people, Captain Jack Harkness, had met Minerva shortly after she regeneration and told the Doctor about it. She knew that even though Minerva was half human, she could still come back after her life force flickered out. She wouldn’t go cold and still the way that Susan had so long ago.

The Doctor reached forward to cup Minerva’s cheek, looking into her dark brown eyes. “You know perfectly well why you aren’t regenerating my dear one. You’re fighting it.”

“I don’t want to die,” she sounded so very young when she said it.

For an instant the Doctor was at the end of her first life again. She remembered the fear so vividly. She’d faced that first death bravely so as to not frighten her companions but she had been so afraid, so very afraid and utterly unable to show it.

“You’ve got to darling. If you fight it too long you’ll risk dying for real.”

“I’m just so tired.” Minerva tried to close her eyes but her twin started poking her in the ribs. “Oh no you don’t, don’t even dare think of it. We’re not old enough to be tired or give up.”

Somehow, even on the verge of death, Minerva managed to glare at her sister. “I’m older than you.”

“By like ten minutes, doesn’t count.”

“Totally counts.”

The Doctor felt a smile tugging at her lips in spite of everything. She had only ever seen the twins three times but she was really looking forward to someday raising them.

Then Minerva started coughing, a deep racking sound. When she took her hand away from her mouth there was dark red blood on it.

“No more delays. You have to do it now” snapped the Doctor. “Everyone get back, even you Diana.”

She remained exactly where she was, “I’ll stay until it starts.”

Minerva held her gaze, suddenly serious. “I don’t want to do this. I want to go. Sarah’s on the other side waiting for me.”

The Doctor had no idea who Sarah was. “She’ll still be there at the end but I doubt she’ll be happy to see you early.

“The rest of this lifetime was hard enough without her, I can’t do eleven more.”

“Yes you can. You are so much stronger than you think you are. Now please, we can talk more after but you have to let it happen.”

“Is there any way I can keep my face? It’s the one she loved. It’s the one my children know. You managed to keep your face once didn’t you?”

The Doctor scrunched her nose, “yes but it only worked because I had a hand.”

“Then help me.”

“No, I mean an actual severed hand. It’s a long story.”

“So I really have to become someone new then,” when she coughed into her glowing hands the blood had gone black.  

“Yes but your memories will remain. Please my dear one please. I am begging you, regenerate. You are strong enough to face this but I can promise you I will never get over it if you die in my arms before you are even born in my timeline. I doubt your birth mother can handle seeing it either. I’m sure your sisters would miss you too.” She stopped rambling.

“I don’t think I can stop it now even if I want to.” Minerva closed her eyes and the glow spread from her hands to the rest of her. As the soft light began to lap over her, the years seemed to fall away from her face and for an instant the Doctor saw the young woman she’d once watched fight abominable snowmen, the little girl who’d flung herself into her arms, the infant she’d helped ease into the world.

Then Yaz was grabbing her by coat and tugged her backwards just as the touch of the regeneration energy began to burn. They fell against the wall as the center of the room was suffused by light. Yaz watched, unable to look away in spite of the brightness. She felt tears dripping down the sides of her face, although she wasn’t sad, not exactly. She’d cried when she’d first witnessessed Minerva birth at the cost of her future selfs blood and pain and love. She cried again as her child sunk into death and fought her way back into the light all alone, even as she was surrounded by those who loved her.

This time there was no piercing wail, only a sudden gasp as air filled new lungs. Minerva slowly sat up, running trembling hands through hair that was suddenly short and wavy. She tugged on a strand until she could see its raven dark color. She held out her hand, now soft and unlined.

“My skins the same at least. What does the rest of me look like?” she turned towards the Doctor with dark green eyes, the mirror of her own.

“Perfect,” said the Doctor which didn’t really tell her anything.

Diana fished a compact mirror out of her pocket and sat down beside her sister so she could look into it.

“I look like a teenager,” she didn’t sound pleased.

“It’s just a young looking face,” said the Doctor gentle. Minerva’s new face was small and heart shaped. It slightly reminded the Doctor of Clara for some reason, although her eyes weren’t as big.

When she tried to stand she stumbled and her sister caught her.

“My shoes are too big,” she complained, looking down at clothes that hung far too loosely on her slight frame.

Diana suddenly began to giggle.

“What?” growled Minerva.

“Your shorter than me! Our whole lives you’ve called me short, now your littiler than I am. Who’s tiny and cute as a button now huh?”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

Minerva was a bit more steady on her feet so she pulled away from her twin enough to consider. “I guess you’re right. We’re both doomed as far as getting stuff down from the top cabinet goes.”

“Just use a stool like I do,” said Misca who was again scanning her sister with the medical tablet from earlier. She seemed to be relieved by the readings she was seeing. “You’re still pretty glowy but I think the regeneration took properly.

She sniffed at her shirt. “So why do I smell weird?”

The Doctor moved closer to give daughter’s hair a proper nuzzle. “I think you’ve come back as an alpha.”

“What? I don’t want to be an alpha. I don’t want to deal with ruts and being all machisma and shit.”

“It’s really not that bad,” said Shiva from where she was leaning against the consul. If anything age had somehow made her a bit suaver, that or she’d just managed to really perfect her knowing smirk.

“Says the woman I have repeatedly caught scent marking everything on this TARDIS.”

“Not everything.”

“I once watched you systematically rub the palms of your hands on every single coat and hat in the hall closet. Oh gods, please tell me I’m not going to start doing that.”

“I hope not, that’s my job,” replied Shiva.

Misca finished her scan and showed it to the Doctor. “So what no? How do we take care of her. None of us have ever done this before except Jenny and she doesn’t really remember the first time she regenerated very well.

“She should rest for at least a day or two if possible. When she gets hungry give her something with protein, sugar and ideally tannins.

“So like tea, bacon and pancakes or something?” asked Misca.

“Yea, that or tea with fishfingers and custard, that’s good too.”

Everyone made a face at that. “That might just be you Mom,” said Shiva.

“I swear it is actually really good.”

Minerva stumbled suddenly and her sisters caught her. “I think I will go for that lie down,” she admitted.

“Let me hug you first,” said the Doctor. She quickly swept her daughter into her arms, kissing the top of her head which was easier to reach now. “Welcome back to the world my darling. I love you so much.”

“I know Mom.”

Yaz finally found the strength to push away from the wall, although she had hung back until then. She hugged her firstborn and kissed her on the cheek. “I will always love you, no matter how many times you go, no matter how many times you come back. You will always be my daughter and absolutely wonderful exactly as you are.”

“I know Mom, you’ve been saying that since I started preschool.” She smiled for the first time in her new life. She had dimples that really reminded Yaz of the Doctor and that made her heart glad.

Once Minerva had left the room with Diana and Misca helped her along the Doctor and Yaz were left with Shiva, Jenny, Vishnu and the woman who’s name the Doctor did not yet know but suspected was likely Cassandra.  

When she turned to the stranger and opened her mouth the grey eyed woman shook her head. “Nope, you don’t get to meet me early. Off the TARDIS with you.”

“But…”

“No. Off you go unless you want to mess up the timeline.”

The Doctor pouted but she went, although not before hugging the three of her daughters that she could. A thousand questions coursed through her mind but she bit her tongue and asked none of them.

Yaz and the Doctor stepped back out into the cool Sheffield night as the red TARDIS hopped away.

Yaz glanced at her watch, then remembered how since it only kept her own time it wasn’t  a really accurate measure of Sheffield of the time. Instead she drew her phone out of her coat. “We’re an hour late. My dad texted, and so did my mom, also and Sonya.” She made a face as she read Sonya’s text. “Why that cheeky little brat, no we didn’t just dart off for a quicky!”

“Should we still go?”

“Sounds like my dad burned the Pakora, no wait my moms says he actually managed to set it on fire this time and they are still airing the kitchen out. They’ve just popped out to a cafe down the road. If we hurry we can get there before they order.”

Yaz couldn’t explain exactly why but she desperately needed something familiar and ordinary. If she and the Doctor just went back to their own TARDIS after what had just happened, she knew she would cry and she didn’t want to.

They set off. “So what do we tell them about why we’re late?”

Yaz paused in her step. “ I don’t know but don’t think I can tell them we just watched one of our daughters die and be reborn.”

“We could,” said the Doctor, “I mean, if you wanted to. Your mom knows I’m a time traveling alien now. Have you talked to your dad and sister about that yet yet?”

“Not exactly. I told Sonya you were an alien after the whole ghost in the loo at the mosque incident. She didn’t seem that surprised, apparently she’s more observant than she lets on. I made the mistake of mentioning the TARDIS and she’s never stopped begging me to let her come on a trip.

“And your dad?”

“I sort of haven’t gotten around to that yet.

The Doctor tilted her head slightly. “Do you think he’ll mind that I’m an alien?”

“No. It’s more that...well. She chewed on her lip. “My relationship with my dad is the last incredibly boring and safe and ordinary thing in my life. If I tell him I’m running around in time and space then that is going to be what he wants to hear about every time I see him. Instead every time I come by he just asks about my job and how I’m doing living with my slightly odd blond girlfriend, then he tells me all the neighborhood gossip. I need that, I need it so much.”  

As she spoke her body began to slump and then suddenly, without meaning to, she was bawling into her hands in the middle of an empty street. The Doctor pulled her into her arms and Yaz got tears and snot all over the collar of her lover’s coat.

“I...I don’t want to tell my dad my daughter just died. He’s never even met her, but if he sees me this sad he’ll try to comfort me and end up crying too. I can’t, I just can’t watch him mourn a grandchild who isn’t even born yet. I don’t know how to do this Doctor, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how you do. A few months ago I held her when she was so new her eyes weren’t focused, and then I scooped up this little wriggling toddler and then I saw this brilliant young woman and now she’s gone. She’s dead and transformed and I haven’t even carried her life inside of myself yet.”

“She’s not gone, our daughter isn’t gone. She’s alive and doing well as a newborn, and as a child and as a grown woman, young and old. She’s shining now in her second regeneration and will shine all that follow. That is just the way of my kind. We’ll conceive her and you’ll carry her and her sister in good time and you’ll hold the baby and the child and the woman.”

Yaz clung to her words. They should have been enough, but in that moment they weren’t. She just felt to raw. The fear she’s seen her child’s eyes still tore at her soul.

“She was just so afraid when the regeneration took her.”

“The first time is always the hardest, she’ll adjust. I did. I have so many times. I’m sure my older self will help her.”

“And I’m already dead in her time and can’t help at all.” As soon as she spoke the words she’d have given her soul to call them back but they were already gone.

“Yes.”

Yaz took a slow, somewhat clogged breath. “I’m being stupid.”

The Doctor stroked her mate’s slightly tangled dark hair, “nothing you ever do is stupid my love.

“I just watched my daughter die and be born again. Few mothers in the history of the earth have ever been so blessed. I should be happy not crying. I saw her sit up again and bitch instead of going sill forever.” An odd thought struck her. “Christians have a whole thing about Mary seeing Jesus come back from the dead and rejoicing, it doesn’t really work that way in Islam exactly, but it sounds like a nice story in their version.”

The Doctor looked at her blankly. She spent a lot of time with humans but she never really been able to make sense of their religions, much less of how the major monotheistic ones branched apart.

Yaz sighed. “What I mean is...fuck it, I don’t know what I mean. I wouldn’t wish our daughters human for all the world, not when being half Time Lord means they can regenerate like you. I just, sometimes I wish I could see them as far along their way as you will.”

The Doctor pressed their forehead together. “I won’t see them all of the way, not unless I somehow get even more regenerations or they squander theirs.”

“They won’t, we’ll raise them better than to ever waste a single moment.”

“Of course.”

“It still hurts.”

“I’m so sorry my darling.”

“I don’t think I can make it to dinner. I don’t want to cry over bad pizza.”

“It’s alright. We’ll text them and say we can’t make it.”

“Sonya really is going to think we just had sex and got distracted.”

“Let her think that then. She needs role models.”

Laughter, almost like insanity, bubbled upside of Yaz. “How on earth would that make us role models?”

The Doctor blinked at her with false innocence. “Isn’t having a happy relationship and lots of sex a human ideal?”

“Yes, I suppose so. You know sometimes I don’t think you understand a damn thing and then you summarize human culture perfectly.”

“I try. So takeout and back to the TARDIS then.”

“Yea.”

The owner of the chinese takeout shop looked at them oddly when they came in, although mostly she kept staring past them as if wondering if a large blue box was going to appear in her takeout only parking space again.

She was terribly kind when Yaz began to suddenly cry again after she handed her the bag of food.

She was worried enough to try and get both Yaz and the Doctor to sit down and drink some tea. She’d know Yaz a long time, there weren’t that many takeaway Chinese shops in that area of Sheffield and her shop was a favorite default option when someone set something on fire in Yaz’s parent’s apartment. The old woman’s kindness just made it worse.

“Death in the family,” the Doctor tried to explain as she hurried Yaz out.

“You take care of her you hear,” the tiny Asian woman warned her. What exactly she’d do if the Doctor didn’t remained unclear, but the Doctor was sufficiently intimidated. She had had learned early in her existence not to anger little old ladies. It never ended well.

They made it back to the TARDIS and ate the food in the TV room curled up together on the couch as they watched _The Princess Bride_.”

As the credits rolled Yaz yawned and said. “I’ve always loved movies like this, sometimes I wish life could just be all beginning, no middles and endings, that’s where things always get hard.”

“I used to hate endings so much I would rip out the last pages of books. I did it my whole eleventh regeneration.”

Yaz leaned back against her. “When I younger I was the opposite. That was always the part I read first.”

“Really.”

“Yea. I think I liked to know where I was going. If I didn’t like the ending I never read the first page.”

“Do you still?”

Yaz considered that for a long time. “I don’t pick books that way anymore. Do you still rip out last pages?”

“No, I stopped the next regeneration. I was such a morbid sort I think I rather liked sad endings then.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never loved the present moment more than I do now.  I don’t fear endings the way I did in my eleventh regeneration. I’ll take the joy of the present with full knowledge of the future cost.”

“Can you teach me how to do that?”

“I think you already know my brilliant, shining, Yaz.”

“Am I still allowed to be sad when I find out that bad things happen in the future or just that things I love end?”

“Of course.”

“Then I think I can do this.”

The Doctor wrapped her arms around her mate, pulling her fully into her lap and nuzzling her hair. “Good because I know I can’t do this without you.”

“You need me?” Yaz tilted her head back to look up at the blond Time Lady.

“Yes, I do. I need you Yasmine Khan.” The Doctor twisted a strand of Yaz’s dark hair between her fingers as if it were the most precious thing in all creation.

“You, an ancient as fuck Time Lady, need a police woman in training from Sheffield?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I am here for you my love and will be for as long as I draw breath.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“Not a damn thing, you’re just lucky, so am I.”

“I’ll accept that.”

They fell asleep like that on the big purple couch they had dragged onto the TARDIS from a thrift shop when the springs on the last one gave out. The past lay behind them, heavy with heartaches and brilliant with remembered joys. The future stretched before them, shining with light and hope, limited only by the edges of mortality.

Yaz dreamed of her daughters through countless faces resplendent and fearless in a world that needed such women. The Doctor closer her eyes and though she thought no rest would come the darkness rose up to meet her. She dreamed of a son who died twelve times in a single day for the sake of protecting a tiny backwater planet that had meant nothing to the Doctor beyond a place to hide them both from the Time Lords.

She dreamed of a tiny perfect daughter that Romana had struggled so hard in pain and blood to bring forth but had still been born cold. She dreamed of Jenny and how still she’d been when she’d left her for dead and she remembered of how her hearts had leapt when she met her again and realized she’d actually come back.

She dreamed of Misca who she never met until she was a bright eyed child, and Shiva so hesitant and fierce. She dreamed of the twins she’d just embraced and Vishnu who’s creation was so far in her future.

She even dreamed of the grey eyed daughter who’d sent her out of the Pleiades' TARDIS, although she did not remember that when she woke the next morning stiff from lying upon the second hand couch. She slipped from beneath her still slumbering mate and went to make tea and pancakes and bacon to help them face the new day.

  



End file.
